The star of this Edison short, Gilbert Saroni, presumably is a guy, because my copies of 1870s (when Gil presumably would have been born) American baby name registries do not list this as an androgynous moniker. The idea that the Edison people would need to cast a MAN in order to have a person ugly enough to make pictures and clocks fall off walls, break mirrors and cameras, etc. is an OUTRAGEOUS insult to a sex which includes Robert Pattinson and Channing Tatum today, not to mention Cary Grant and Michael York from yesteryear. Furthermore, the light bulb folks would not have needed to venture very far from their East Coast headquarters to find someone that would fit the mirror-breaking bill to a tee. I'm talking about May Irwin, of course, the "star" of their alleged "hit" from several years earlier, THE KISS. Certainly the smoocher who drove co-star John C. Whatever to an early suicide would have broken more mirrors than the comic script character Broomhilda has in all her 5,000 years!
